The Artist. Watched the trailer of that, and thought it was quite gutsy to release a black-and-white silent melodrama. The only problem I saw is that it seems to be too knowing, like it knows it cannot be taken at face value, so it doesn't want to, multiplies allusions and goes straight for awards.

It's the same problem with people who try to take 19th-century-style pictures of themselves. You know the type: seated on a chair, legs crossed, with a small table with some trinket (a flower vase, usually) next to them, a carpet and a painted backdrop. Even if everything is vintage -- the clothes, furniture, and even the camera -- there is always one element that gives it away: the person's attitude to the camera, invariably one of pretending not to pretend -- or more accurately, pretending to be pretending not to pretend. It always comes across as "trying to be acting serious by attempting to appear as though not acting at all". Even more simply put, a 19th-century person would be seriously acting more serious than he/she was, because the portrait still mattered. Photography was rare, done by professionals in studios; it was a more realistic (and affordable) method than a painting. This was how posterity would remember you. A 21st-century person doing a fake vintage photo would be jokingly trying to be someone acting more serious than he/she was. That whole "stately, not candid" approach to photography was so hypocritically Victorian, we might as well mock it. And now we've forgotten how to not mock it.

Once again, you've offered enough interesting critique in a comment section that I wish you'd see to impart in a review, of which you don't really write nearly enough of. C'mon, pal -- break the streak and churn 'em out.

_________________"Joe the Plumber -- you can quote me -- is a dumbass." -- Meghan McCain